Hello, this is a blog for all my sketches, doodles, and anything else put on paper by me. Please feel free to comment/critique, there's no such thing as a mean comment so long as it's constructive and helps me improve.

Sunday, August 30, 2009

Jose Carioca

When I was a kid we owned the Three Caballero's, it was a Disney film made in 1943 as part of the 'good neighbor' act to help us gain allys during WWII. Out of it came my two favorite Disney characters created. Jose "Ze" Carioca and the Aracuan.Right now i have depicted Jose, i like Jose because unlike many of the Disney characters that i'm aware of he was a quintessential cool guy. Panama hat, bumbershoot, and what appears to be a zoot suit, he loved hanging out at cafes, dancing, meeting beautiful women, and smoking fat cigars. He is Donald Ducks cousin (I believe, I know that they were related, the duo were commonly referred to as 'Birds of a Feather') so cartoons of him are usually with Donald explaining the beauty of his beloved country (HAVE YOU BEEN TO BAHIA?!), Jose is very energetic but suave when he's around the ladies, incredibly friendly, and is very nostalgic.

I did a quick drawing of him using constructions, I then compared it to the original and made notes regarding proportion, and made another one while refering these notes, it was very close so i made a little construction model in the bottom right so I wouldn't forget. I then started to focus on his head.His head was pretty tricky for me because of that beak. but i think the hardest part was getting that lower part of the beak the right size and shape, what i did to help me was break some of the construction even further making only squares and rectangles to get the right angles and size, i then scultped these shapes into round objects which became the forms and molded his face.What i didn't catch was the shape of his eye, which was too narrow and needed to be rounder and more egg shaped, which I oversaw.

Jose has only been in a couple things in the early 40's "Saludos Amigos" "Three Cabarello's" "Cafe de Samba" and "Aquarela do Brazil" he also appeared in a couple comics along side Donald. Jose is much, much more popular in Brazil and has his own comic and appears along side Mickey and he even has a superhero persona. I'd like to get a hand on some of these comics, I'll try and find some, in the mean time here's a video of him.